Overview of The Series
In a 1997 interview with Andy Diggle for the now defunct Comics World website, Alan Moore gave the title of the work as "The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk". Moore changed the name to Gentlemen to better reflect the Victorian era.
The Victorian setting allowed Moore and O'Neill to insert "in-jokes" and cameos from many works of Victorian fiction, while also making contemporary references and jibes. The works bear numerous steampunk influences. In the first issue, for example, there is a half-finished bridge to link Britain and France, referencing problems constructing the Channel Tunnel. The juxtaposition of characters from different sources in the same story is similar to science fiction writer Philip José Farmer's works centering around the Wold Newton family or Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series.
Most characters in the series, from the dominatrix schoolmistress Rosa Coote to minor characters such as Inspector Dick Donovan, are either an established character from an existing work of fiction or an ancestor of the same, to the extent that individuals depicted in crowd scenes in Volume I have been said (both by Moore, and in annotations by Jess Nevins) to be visually designed as the ancestors of the cast of EastEnders. This has lent the series considerable popularity with fans of esoteric Victoriana, who have delighted in attempting to place every character who makes an appearance.
Moore said:
| “ | The planet of the imagination is as old as we are. It has been humanity's constant companion with all of its fictional locations, like Mount Olympus and the gods, and since we first came down from the trees, basically. It seems very important, otherwise, we wouldn't have it. | ” |
Sherlock Holmes and Dracula are notably absent from the League's adventures due to their assumed deaths prior to the events of the series. The former is presented in a flashback sequence, and the latter is given connections to Wilhelmina Murray. Moore has noted that he felt these two seminal characters would overwhelm the rest of the cast. Holmes is still believed by the public to be deceased following the events of The Final Problem, although it is revealed in the second volume that Mina later meets with him.
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“History is nothing but a procession of false Absolutes, a series of temples raised to pretexts, a degradation of the mind before the Improbable.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)